Harry Chase

Henry Seymour Chase Jr. (February 2, 1853 in Woodstock, Vermont – October 1, 1889 in Sewanee, Tennessee), better known by his professional name Harry Chase, was an American artist who specialized in marine paintings.

Birth and early life

Harry Chase was born on February 2, 1853, to Dr. Henry Seymour Chase and Sarah Denison Chase (née Haskell) in Woodstock, Vermont. In 1857, the family moved to Independence, Iowa, where Dr. Chase tried his hand at farming. Harry grew up in Iowa, and showed an early interest in art. From 1865 to 1868, the Chase family lived in Iowa City, Iowa, where Harry received his first comprehensive art instruction and also matriculated to the State University of Iowa in the city.

In 1868, the Chases moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where Dr. Chase took a position as the Chair of Operative Surgery at the Missouri Dental College.

Formal studies and early career

In 1868, Harry Chase joined the atelier of displaced Southern aristocrat and itinerant portrait painter, James Reeve Stuart, who kept his studio on Olive Street in St. Louis. Together with another young artist, Paul E. Harney Jr., Chase studied under Stuart until 1870, when he departed for New York where Chase entered the Antique Class under Lemuel Wilmarth at the National Academy of Design.

Returning to St. Louis in 1871, Chase was determined to further his studies at the Bavarian Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In the summer of 1872, Chase departed St. Louis for Munich with another young hopeful, William Merritt Chase (no known relation), and they traveled together to Europe. Harry Chase studied in Munich from 1872 until the end of 1875.

Chase returned to St. Louis in 1876, where he staged a very successful solo show and auction, selling 40 works and pocketing enough from the profits to return to Europe to study in Paris.

Before he left, he married Laura Emeline Eames in January 1877.

In 1879, Chase changed masters and became the protégé of Hendrik Willem Mesdag, the great Dutch marine painter, in Scheveningen, the Netherlands. It was Mesdag and Dutch Impressionism that would have the greatest influence on Chase's style. Under Mesdag, Chase was again successful in having a painting accepted at the Salon de Paris of 1879. In 1883, he was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design. In 1885, he won the Hallgarten Prize for his painting New York Harbor, North River, now part of the collection of the Katzen Arts Center of the American University, Washington D.C. From 1886 to 1889, Chase was treated for his ailments in both Poughkeepsie, New York, at the Hudson River State Asylum for the Insane, and later in Sewanee, Tennessee, under the treatment of Dr. William M. Harlow. Chase died in Sewanee on October 1, 1889, and was brought back to St. Louis where he was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery.

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